Compression Sleeves

Is This Simple Gear Letting Dwayne Wade Stay In The Game?

If you’ve followed the NBA over the past few years, you’ve undoubtedly noticed it on the court: The typical uniform includes more than just jerseys, shorts and sneakers. More and more star athletes regularly wrap and compress their limbs and joints with sleeves and pads. But are all sleeves created equal? HEX technology from Chicago-based sports medical company McDavid claims to be more flexible and breathable than other pads and more functional than non-padded sleeves.

You see NBA players like Carmelo Anthony and Chris Bosh wearing them. Dwayne Wade, with his notoriously bad knees (who has now been diagnosed with chronic arthritis) never seems to be on the court without them.

We talked to Vice President of Operations Terry Fee about what separates HEX from the pack.

“We really invented the category of protective apparel, to where the players would really accept it. There used to be some garments before that would have a pad sewn into a garment, but it didn’t stretch, it didn’t have any conformability, it didn’t have any breathability.”

Compression sleeves are nothing new in the NBA and have been around for decades. McDavid has simply updated them with a more functional type of protective padding.

“Allen Iverson wearing the compression sleeve? Well, an [ordinary] compression sleeve on your arm, we think that’s really for show. But what we did was we introduced a padded aspect to these garments,” Fee said.

Unlike the basic one-piece pads that you may have worn at some point in recreational play, HEX tech underpins more advanced padded apparel. It provides impact protection in a package that moves and breathes naturally. The pads are essentially sliced and diced polyethylene foam arranged into larger protective areas. The dime-sized hexagonal pieces are spaced about 2 mm apart and laminated to stretch fabric. Instead of one bulging dome, a Hex kneepad is made up of about 80 small nuggets of foam. McDavid can also vary the thickness of the pad from 3 mm to 14 mm to offer different blends of performance and impact absorption.

“The foam in and of itself does not stretch. But where we get the stretch is that we put a little bit of space in between each of the foam elements. Because the pieces are so small, they conform really well. And because there’s a gap in between each of the pieces of foam, there’s breathing. And because it’s laminated to a stretch fabric, you have stretch. So you’ve overcome all of the obstacles that an elite athlete would have when he was wearing a pad before.”

McDavid first came across HEX technology at a 2003 tradeshow, eventually purchasing the worldwide rights from its British inventor. McDavid integrated the protective technology into its existing compression apparel and experienced immediate success in college and NFL football. The Miami Heat (Shaquille O'Neal was an early adopter) picked it up from the Miami Dolphins, and it’s become a staple in the NBA ever since.